Top all-time · #2911
We Were Sofa
Company blog · madebysofa.com/blogprogrammingdesign
We Were Sofa is the company blog at madebysofa.com, writing about programming and design. Since 2008, 25 different Hacker News readers have linked it 41 times, most often “Indie Fever - Report on the independent Mac development community”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (19) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Sofa's site as a showcase of app and interface design, often with praise for the studio's work. Also linked is Indie Fever, an ethnography of indie Mac developers.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 19 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- /8 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2008-10-16
- Indie Fever - Report on the independent Mac development community2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2008-07-23
- /2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2008-12-13
- /jobs2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2010-05-16
- /2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-06-10
- We Were Sofa A software and interaction design company2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2009-06-06
- /2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2009-06-06
What Hacker News says?
Sofa is hiring fulltime employees to work in our nice Amsterdam office(1) in the city centre with ~11 other talented people on our mac apps, web apps and interaction design consultancy. We need a financial mastermind, web/ui designers and python/cocoa developers. See madebysofa.com/jobs or shoot me an email at koen@madebysofa.com There is a pretty good program to get a permanent working permit in the Netherlands cal…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Who's Hiring? (take 2)”Submitted Facebook Acquires Sofa as a story · 179 points
HN discussionAfter reading this post my insides were grumbling, "Ugh. Acquihire." And yes, this is actually the first TRUE acquihire to my knowledge, in that the products themselves weren't even a part of the deal. But after browsing through http://www.madebysofa.com/#design , I'm absolutely floored. This is beyond top-notch. This was a perfectly justifiable acquisition of sky-high talent. Yes, I somewhat disagree with the acqui…
Comment linking /
on “Facebook Acquires Sofa”Submitted Grand Central Dispatch: The Sleeping Barber Problem as a story · 46 points
HN discussionThese guys have amazing design. Have you guys seen the cappuccino maker design? Incredible! http://www.madebysofa.com/#design
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on “Facebook Acquires Sofa”Submitted Ruby on OSX Slides as a story · 19 points
HN discussionYou can find everything about our apps and Enstore here: http://www.madebysofa.com/future/ We won't be taking on any more contract work (haven't anyway since the end of 2009) Cheers, - Dirk
Comment linking /future/
on “Facebook Acquires Sofa”Submitted Indie Fever as a story · 17 points
HN discussionLet's not forget the very talented folks at Sofa : http://www.madebysofa.com/
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Best Startup City - Outside the USA?”Submitted Managing Enstore as a story · 12 points
HN discussionThese are the guys you should hire. http://www.madebysofa.com/
Comment linking /
on “Introducing "Aristo", A jQuery UI Theme/Experiment”Submitted Facebook acquires Sofa as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSofa is always looking for great obj-c/obj-j/python/js/support/ui-designer people to work fulltime in Amsterdam. http://www.madebysofa.com/jobs
Comment linking /jobs
on “Ask HN: Who's hiring in Europe?”Submitted We Were Sofa A software and interaction design company as a story · 2 points
HN discussionMy previous company shipped mac desktop apps written in Python. It made sense at the time (no sqlalchemy for cocoa) but turned out not to be great for many reasons. The two main ones imho were that the language doesn't fit the framework (argument passing style) and that you have to understand both languages and the bridge to be able to debug well. My cofounder did a nice talk on our experiences: http://www.madebysof…
Comment linking /archive/blog/pyobjc-and-cocoa/index.html
on “Build iOS Apps In Ruby - Available Summer '12”Submitted Gameboards and GUIs - Can a graphical user interface be like a gameboard? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionHaven't seen the Sofa guys on here yet. Minimalist, Apple-esque app design: http://www.madebysofa.com/ My favorite interactive design agency: http://www.2advanced.com/
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Who are the top UI designers on the web today?”Submitted Indie Fever - Report on the independent Mac development community as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI've always been a fan of MetaLab's work I also really like what Sofa does: http://www.madebysofa.com/ (checkout the enstore demo, epic: http://www.enstore.com ) Ryan Singer of 37signals was very impressive when I saw him speak at RailsConf this year. I definitely think he's up there. http://twitter.com/rjs
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Who are the top UI designers on the web today?”Submitted Many Mirrors (Kaleidoscope by SOFA) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionIt might not be considered a startup (anymore) but maybe Sofa ( http://madebysofa.com )
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on “Any desktop app based startups?”Submitted Sofa- Many Mirrors (thoughts on the design of Kaleidoscope's icon) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionYes, some of the recent stuff we've been working on will making skinning much easier. We now have two themes, the "default", which you see in 280 Slides, and the new "Aristo" theme we announced with Atlas (designed by Sofa: http://www.madebysofa.com/ ) Aristo is designed to "feel at home" in Mac OS X and Windows. Does it look too much like OS X for you, or are you talking about the 280 Slides theme?
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on “Atlas: Under the Hood”Submitted CocoaHeads Amsterdam Beginner iPhone Development Presentation as a story · 1 points
HN discussionWe've done pieces ourselves, and... http://www.madebysofa.com/ - Cappuccino logo at http://cappuccino.org http://metalabdesign.com/ - splash page for http://280slides.com and http://280north.com http://cocoagrove.com/ - 280 Slides logo and some of the graphical elements in 280 Slides
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Who designed the graphics for your web app, and where did you find them?”Sofa in Amsterdam - http://www.madebysofa.com/jobs
Comment linking /jobs
on “Ask HN: Who's hiring in Europe?”Just in time for WWDC too. Epic. And I'm going to take a second to hijack this thread for a tangentially related announcement: 280 North is co-hosting a small event with Sofa ( http://madebysofa.com/ - they're responsible for Cappuccino's new theme, "Aristo") on Monday for Cappuccino developers and anyone else who wants to join us. http://cpcoder.eventbrite.com/ 7-9PM, Martini Room at Jillian's in Metreon across the…
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on “Apple Gets Pwned, SF Store Is Now Advertising DVD Jon’s doubleTwist”Anthropology is ridiculously useful for sales and marketing. I owe a guy named Michiel van Meeteren a beer or three for his 'Indie Fever' ( http://www.madebysofa.com/indiefever/ ), a ethnography of indie Mac developers - which came out right when I was crafting a pitch to indie Mac developers at the start of the iOS software boom back in 2008. That book is terribly dated now - the success of iOS completely mutated t…
Comment linking /indiefever/
on “Geek Researcher Spends Three Years Living With Hackers”Like Zuckerberg said: Move fast, fix later. Design is important (hell, I'm a designer) but not the most important thing when launching. They'll improve it later. They didn't go around buying up talented designers like SOFA for nothing: http://www.madebysofa.com/
Comment linking /
on “Facebook launches App Center”Sofa ( http://www.madebysofa.com ) is really good (they did that excellent Cappuccino icon), but I imagine they're pretty expensive.
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on “Ask YC: Which custom icon designers do you use for your startup?”
